Converting From Sketchup to Blender

Introduction: Converting From Sketchup to Blender

PLEASE NOTE:all this plus more is also available at https://www.instructables.com/id/Sketchup-3D-modelling-file-conversion-and-advice-/

in my experience sketchup is awesome and intuitive for modelling whilst blender is hard and confusing, whilst blender is capable of brilliant animation and rendering where sketchup does neither(really). what if there was a way to combine the ease of sketchup and the power of blender, model in sketchup, then use blender to animate. there are other methods i described before but the site i recommended has turned it's back on services for us modellers and is now out for profit and nothing else, here is a new method for achieving the same thing AND not only is it free but it is also better at preserving textures and mapping. hope this helps you...

PS. this could be helpful for 3d printing as sketchup can be an effective tool for designing your 3d prints and blender can help process them and export to other formats like .stl

2.now open sketchup a small pop up box should have appeared with some brightly coloured buttons, do not press any of them yet.

3. then separate out all the parts of the sketchup model you want to be able to move so they are nice clean distances away from where they should be (as in 3metres, 5m, 10m or whatever) this is because the grouping structure of sketchup will [B]not[/B] be preserved in the translation process.

4. then save the sketchup file in sketchup

5.now press the first button on the new toolbar marked "export model to kerkythea"

12. find the file using my documents and copy the xml document into the folder where the textures of your model have been saved(that folder will be in the same folder asthe xml file and named TX_(file name of xml)

13. download this filehttp://www.nicetuna.com/kt2obj Important note: you need to have java on your computer for this to run, if you lack it java must be installed for the converter to work, however sometimes even with java installed it can fail(as happened on a window 8 machine of mine). Should that occur try the .net version instead, it can work where java fails. It will also allow you to convert files without needing to install java at all.

14.extract the .zip file into a new folder

15.open a file browser and go to where you left the xml file

16. right click and copy it

17.go to the folder where you extracted the zip file to and select the file "jkt2obj" it is an MS-DOS batch file

18. right click then paste

19.click run on the pop up window (scan for viruses first if you wish)

20. wait until the command prompt window displays "press any key to continue"

21.press a key then open up the folder containing the old xml file, an obj and mtl file will have appeared in that folder

22.open blender

23. import the new obj file

24. now join all the objects in this mesh together into one then proceed to go through the mesh in edit mode as follows

24a. select(using "b" key) an isolated object by drawing a box around it, make sure that the check box to select obscured from view objects is on and that there are no other objects directly behind what you select.

24b. press "p" key to separate the selection from the main object then close edit mode and select the new object, give it an appropriate name and set the origin for it by positioning(often with the snap to tools) the origin

24c. then move it along a certain distance on 1 axis back to where it belongs on the model, essentially reversing the separation process you performed while still in sketchup.

message me if you have any problems or want to know more about anything

PLEASE NOTE: my new instructable on using sketchup and blender has a more detailed tutorial on this conversion process, it should help explain anything that this does not address. it also shows what to do once the model is in blender.

what the heck, i found that also. i have no clue what is going on, the entire kerkythea website seems to be doing that to me. it wasn't doing that when i downloaded it.

http://www.kerkythea.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12283 that may explain the problem as the whole kerkythea.net is doing the same. try again in a few weeks or if you are desperate i could probably supply you with the exporter. sorry about that.

my heck is that site still down. firstly i would say see my other instructable for a better more detailed guide but i know of no other links to that very important rb script file. i don't know if i'm really allowed to share the file but i suppose i ought, this method works great on my old xp machine but note that on a new windows 8 machine there are issues with the second stage(bat file) which may just be down to java setup on new machine. i cannot confirm whether or not this export script you mention works with the latest sketchup versions, google may have locked down the format a bit more since then but it is ideal with sketchup 8.0.11 ... . i'll seee what i can do, if i have not posted here again within two weeks, post here again to remind me of this.